I love music so much; that I don't see what good comes from choosing one cultural export as the song that defined our year 2014. The investigation of the word "artistry" is the only good thing to emerge from this media blip.

"Up on the Roof" was the title of a Drifters song, but it's where you want to be in Barcelona. Barcelona is literally a roof party in an architectural wonderland. At times it almost looks like a fairytale.

Before we get to what's wrong with Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Stephen Sondheim, let's establish what's so right that it instantly joins the ranks of irresistible jukebox tuners Jersey Boys, Motown The Musical and Mamma Mia.

Premiering in San Francisco before its January New York opening, Beautiful, The Carole King Musical, is yet another Juke box musical. But unlike other recent musical biographies about musical careers, the Carole King story is really about music making.

Al Kooper was like a sonic roommate during my freshman year at a small university in a Pennsylvania town with a population under 5,000. My actual roommate was a very nice guy who never said anything. Meaningful contact with attractive females was out of the question for a shy frosh, so I spent my free hours under the headphones with the Blues Project, of which he was a key member.

Jerry Leiber was not only a superb songwriter and producer but also an extremely funny, droll wit of the highest order. I had the honor to know him a little and his humor and his generosity of spirit were exemplary and uplifting.

Though you may not be aware of it, you are almost certainly familiar with Roger Hodgson and his body of work too. For a decade and a half he served as one of two main songwriters and vocalists who founded Supertramp.